The Mechanical Watches Are Better Than Smartwatches

While there are precious-metal watches that are so big that wearing one is akin to exercise, traditional mechanical watches do little for one’s health. It is the smartwatch that measures our pulse, the number of steps we take and count our calories.

The Apple Watch’s activity reminder is especially useful, vibrating every waking hour to remind you to take a break, go to the toilet or what we do.

In contrast, the closest a traditional mechanical watch comes to that is the Grand Sonnerie or hour striker complication, which automatically chimes every hour or quarterhour. Tiny hammers and gongs inside the watch produce pleasant, clear chimes, though they are usually so soft the watch needs to be held next to the ear for them to be heard.

Though the luxury watch industry has done little for consumer health, it is not for lack of trying. In the mid-2000s, Philip Stein enjoyed a brief burst of popularity when Oprah Winfrey endorsed its watches on her daytime talk show. Swiss-based but American-led, Philip Stein makes watches and bracelets that ostensibly create a force field of sorts around the wearer, improving sleep and reducing stress.

While the claims about its products’ health benefits have been disputed, that has not stopped Philip Stein from selling almost 70,000 watches a year, according to media reports.

Rather than offer tangible solutions to fitness and health, old-fashioned mechanical watches offer a measure of stress relief stemming from the satisfaction of having a well-crafted miniature machine ticking away effortlessly on the wrist.

Watching a tourbillon spin on the dial of a watch is certainly a pleasing experience, especially for a watch aficionado, perhaps akin to a soothing spa treatment.

And then there are multi-axis tourbillons, with several cages rotating on different axes and at different speeds, 2X the spectacle, 3X the satisfaction but at 10X the price.

The spectacle of the tourbillon is the reason nearly all tourbillon watches have an aperture on the dial to view the mechanism, even though it is functionally unnecessary. That also explains why tourbillons have been so popular, literally every watchmaker, low- or high-end, has one in its offerings despite being very expensive.

But it is perhaps the deeper level of appreciation of a mechanical watch that brings the greatest Zen moments.

Look deep into an exquisitely finished watch movement, think of the works of Patek Phillipe, Philippe Dufour or A. Lange & Sohne, and marvel at the incredible skill needed to design and fashion the metal components into surfaces so smooth and round they resemble liquid mercury.

Some say it is like transcending the Here and Now and stepping onto another plane: meditation for watch lovers.